Exploring alternatives to constantly buying new crap

What do you do when you have more of something than you need? You organize a swap, of course!

I’ve never organized a swap before, but there’s a first time for everything. In this case, I had some excess plants from my propagation experiments and, as always, a ton of extra seeds. While I’m not always a very social person, my work uses Slack and has a channel set up just for folks to talk about gardening. And why not? Gardening is the perfect hobby for anyone who stares at a computer screen for 8 hours a day. One of my coworkers said he’d have a bunch of extra tomato and pepper starts at the end of February, so the timing for the swap was pretty obvious. I booked a conference room and let everyone in the chat know to look forward to this swap for sharing any extra plants and/or seeds.

For over a month, I’ve been eagerly anticipating this day, wondering which of my plants would be likely to find a new adoptive home. In the end I chose 10 pots, including a couple of aloe, a couple of spearmint, a dwarf barbados cherry, and a few others.

Six plants awaiting their forever home

We only had three folks bring in plants and seeds, but it was more than enough to go around. Once word got out, various folks dropped by to check out our offerings, a few of them sharing regrets that they did have extra seed or plants at home that they missed out on bringing in. With this interest, we went ahead and scheduled another swap for a month out. If I’m lucky, this will turn into a regular thing.

Some of the plants and seeds (and pots!) shared at the swap

I ended up going home with two plants. No one else wanted the yaupon holly, which is fine because I do have a place for it to go eventually. And I nabbed one of the few small tomato plants left at the end of the event–a yellow pear.

(I asked folks to return the plant pots to be washed and reused, but we’ll see how many actually make their way back.)

Oh, and tons of seeds. I have plenty of seeds of nigella, various melons, carrot, sunflower, shelling pea, mizuna, and more. Now I just need to figure out when and where to plant them all!

Overall, it was pretty awesome, especially hearing gardening stories from other folks with whom I’d never discussed anything other than work. The new treasures don’t hurt either. I’m already looking forward to the next swap.

One thought on “Organizing a Swap”

Great job on the swap, it sounds like something fun I’ll have to try in the future. And what an awesome find with the yaupon holly! It’s one of the only (if not the only) naturally caffeinated plant native to the US. I think holly is really pretty and wouldn’t mind having it around.